For a PEH device to act as an effective sensor, it has to be designed with the dual purpose of achieving efficient energy harvesting as well as high sensing accuracy. Although, significant progress has been made in designing efficient PEH from the energy harvesting points of view [1]}, [2]}, [3]}, little is known about the impact of PEH design parameters, such as its geometrical shapes on its sensing performance. The intent of this work is to explore PEH design spaces to understand the impact of design configurations on both energy harvesting as well as sensing accuracy. The knowledge gained from this exercise allows dual-function PEHs' design that are favourable for both energy harvesting and sensing. To realize our goal, we evaluated both energy harvesting efficiency and vehicle speed sensing accuracy of six different shapes of a cantilever-type PEH fed by an extensive vibration dataset collected from a large-scale operating cable-stayed bridge. Our results reveal that both energy harvesting efficiency and sensing accuracy depend significantly on the shape of the PEH, and there exist configurations with more favourable harvesting and sensing performances. This finding indicates potential opportunities for jointly optimizing energy harvesting and sensing for various types of PEH devices and applications.
